The tomato war between Red Hat, Novell and the developer Gnome community about Mono and its legal safety continued today. Novell's Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza replied to yesterday's editorial by Red Hat's Seth Nickell. Later, Red Hat's Havoc Pennington replied to Nat and Gnome's Andrew Sobala also threw a few (metallic) cents too. For future episodes, bookmark PlanetGnome (unverified rumors circulating on IRC claim that eggs might be used next if there is no sign of their lawyers meeting with Microsoft to try to give an end to the saga). In any case, you don't want to miss this.

Here's a nice quote from Havoc Pennington:
The issue here is risk management. Sure, C/C++/Python could infringe some patents. However, the risk is a heck of a lot lower. Those technologies are not invented by and driven forward by the single most powerful and open-source-hostile company in the tech industry.

And here's the translation:
"For all these years that Mono has been being developed it didn't matter if ECMA 334 and 335 were free and clear, since it was from Microsoft we were never going to touch it with a 10-foot pole."

Your translation skills are rusty. A better translation would be:

"Attractive technology standards from a very cunning, hostile, and powerful company are likely to have hidden traps to trip up competitors who implement those standards."

One does not have to have an immature and melodramatic image of Microsoft as the Evil Empire(TM) to not trust it. Ask Stac Technologies. Ask the guys who made DR-DOS. Ask Netscape. Microsoft has earned our suspicion, and we should be wary of what comes from it.

From zirzop:

I think what Miguel is getting right here is the fact that Linux should be "wise" businesswise.

And what many think is that using Mono is not business wise. Even if it is good technology on its own merits, if it can be used against us by Microsoft, it is a Bad Thing(TM).